Chapter 8: Crimson Echoes
Kalen sat in silence, the wind whispering through the broken shutter.
Eryk lay sleeping, breath shallow but steady.
Alive. Still.
Outside, the blood of the dead bear had frozen into black ice.
But something still pulsed in it.
Something old.
Kalen could hear it.
A heartbeat.
But not one from the present.
> "Show me," he whispered.
He reached out, fingertips brushing the frozen blood.
---
The Past Answers
His vision snapped.
Like the world had shattered into shards of glass.
Suddenly, he stood in another time.
The bear—years ago—ran through the woods, proud and clean, a creature of majesty. It roared not in pain but in freedom.
Then came the corruption.
A robed figure, cloaked in smoke and symbols etched in dead language, pierced its heart with a black knife. A whisper followed:
> "From rot, rise. From red, kneel."
And the bear began to change.
The figure turned, as if sensing Kalen's watching presence. But it could not see him. Not yet.
> "A Bloody Seer," a voice murmured.
"A child of scarlet threads."
The vision faded.
---
Kalen gasped as the world returned.
His hand was slick with blood, though the bear's corpse had long frozen.
> "I can… see," he whispered. "Through blood."
He looked to Eryk.
His father still slept, brow pale.
The wound was healed—but the blood told Kalen more.
> He has months at most, it said.
The sorrow is eating him faster than time.
---
Kalen clenched his fists.
His blood stirred. He could feel it responding, like a creature waking in his veins.
Power.
Not aura. Not mana.
This was something older, deeper—like the world's marrow had accepted him as kin.
---
Blood Responds to Him Now
He moved to the corpse of the bear.
Its blood had begun to soak the snow in spirals.
He raised a hand, uncertain—but his instincts guided him. The blood trembled. Then rose like liquid metal under a magnet.
It floated—soft, rippling, waiting.
> "Bleed forward," Kalen whispered.
The blood obeyed.
A shape formed in it—a circle of eyes, symbols flashing inside the liquid like stars.
> "Show me the path ahead."
Images flooded his mind.
A burning tree screaming in a voice like thunder.
A city of glass, its people blindfolded in crimson.
And himself, older—crowned in red, standing on a mountain of silence, weeping.
---
He staggered back, bleeding from the nose.
It was too much.
The Bloody Seer was not a gift meant for children.
Not yet.
---
But the blood whispered again.
> "You are not a child."
> "You are a Crown."
---
Kalen stood still, trying to understand.
He reached out to the blood once more, this time not to see but to shape.
And it bent. Easily.
The snow around him reddened, not with violence—but with recognition.
Blood obeyed him now.
Only partially. Only barely.
But it had begun.
---
Back in the Cabin
Eryk stirred.
Kalen returned to him, kneeling by his side.
> "I won't let you die," he said quietly.
"I will change your blood if I must."
He laid a hand over his father's heart.
And for the first time, the blood responded gently, like a child listening to its parent.
A red glow flickered beneath Eryk's skin.
Not pain. Not corruption.
Healing.
---
Kalen looked at his own hand.
> "What am I becoming?"
The blood answered.
> "What you were always meant to be."
---
Far Away…
In a chamber carved from obsidian and bone, a priest of the Crimson Veil dropped his chalice.
His eyes turned red for a moment. He gasped.
> "The Blood has awakened," he hissed.
> "The Crown has been born."
And all across the continent, in temples, towers, and tombs—
Something stirred.
---
A Vision Carved in Blood
The candles in the meditation hall hadn't gone out by wind.
Urial knew that much the moment he stepped inside.
> "You called for me," the Swordmaster said, eyes sweeping the still chamber.
Maraka knelt in the center of the circle of extinguished flame, eyes wide, unfocused.
Not afraid — just... changed.
> "I saw something," Maraka whispered.
Urial folded his arms, expression unreadable.
> "Explain."
---
The Dream
"It wasn't a dream," the boy said. "It was real. I felt it like a blade in my chest."
Urial waited.
> "There was a child," Maraka said. "No older than me. His eyes were… red. Not like fire. Like grief. Like war. Like blood given shape."
> "He stood over a dying man. His father, I think. The man bled from a wound too deep to live. But the boy placed his hand on him, and the blood stopped."
> "It listened to him."
Urial's silence deepened.
> "Then they left a wooden hut… in a cold land. A grave lay behind them. A woman's. The child never looked back, but the father did."
> "He wept. Not loudly. Like someone who didn't know how to anymore."
> "And the child's hand—when it touched his father's—glowed red."
---
Urial closed his eyes.
> "You're certain this was no dream?"
Maraka looked up, defiant.
> "Master… I don't have dreams. You trained them out of me."
> "This was something else. I think… I saw the future."
Or the past.
Or both.
---
The Swordmaster's Silence
Urial moved across the hall slowly, relighting a single candle.
The flame hissed briefly—then stilled.
> "The boy you saw," Urial said, "did he feel... wrong to you?"
> "No," Maraka said after a moment. "Not wrong. Not evil."
> "But not natural, either."
Urial grunted.
> "There are forces older than kingdoms, Maraka. Older than swords. Some take the shape of gods. Others... take the shape of children."
He placed a hand on the boy's shoulder.
> "Tell no one else of this."
Maraka's eyes narrowed. "Why?"
> "Because if it is true, then the empires will want to use him... or kill him."
> "And if it is false, they will want to use you."
---
The Vision Lingers
Later that night, Maraka sat on his balcony, overlooking the towers of the Nebula Capital.
He stared at the stars.
> "What are you?" he whispered. "Red-eyed boy."
He could still see the image burned behind his eyes:
A child walking through snow.
A man limping beside him.
A grave behind them.
A kingdom ahead of them.
And the wind whispering the color red.
---
Far to the north, beyond mountains and storm-lines, Kalen and Eryk walked through the frozen woods of Arktika.
Kalen paused once, glancing up at the stars.
> "Someone saw me," he said quietly.
Eryk looked at him.
> "What do you mean?"
Kalen's red eyes gleamed.
> "I don't know. But his soul was loud."